Always busy, Hartsfield traffic manageable for New Year's Eve weekend

State news

ATLANTA -- It would have been a surreal sight at any hour, Chester Reed noted, but it was doubly so at 5:30 a.m. in an airport terminal. An assemblage of shoes, doffed hurriedly by their owners.

''It was kind of odd because people were taking their shoes off without even being told,'' said Reed, a Miami chef who kicked off his long holiday weekend Friday morning with an Amstel Light at Hartsfield Atlanta.

Days after a man tried to light his sneaker bomb on an American flight from Paris, federal authorities have mandated spot shoe checks.

The shoe check reinforced the notion that the government acts only after such incidents, said Reed, marking his sixth New Year's Eve with three nights of Widespread Panic concerts in Atlanta.

Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport began its final holiday weekend Friday with more than 331,000 travelers expected through Sunday, about 100,000 fewer than passed through the world's busiest airport the weekend before Christmas.

Like most years, fewer Georgians were taking to the roads and skies for New Year's Eve celebrations. Thanksgiving and Christmas rank as No. 1 and 2 on the most popular travel holidays, Hartsfield spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said.

There was a 35-minute wait through security lines Friday morning, although lines at airline check-in desks were moving more than twice that fast.

In response to some passenger complaints, United Airlines has erected a 6-foot partition around luggage screening tables to offer more privacy. The airline may consider such partitions at other airports, United spokesman Joe Hopkins said.

''You don't have to worry about the guy in line behind you second-guessing your lifestyle,'' Hopkins joked.

On the highways, the Georgia State Patrol predicts 18 people will die on Georgia roads through the weekend traveling period, which began at 6 p.m. Friday.